My grandfather plied his trade as a carpenter and handyman in San Diego after he returned from D-day, France, and a tour in the Pacific. I never really knew him except as a gruff, grumpy codger who thought children ought to be silent observers. There was a smelly old army uniform hanging in the closet, but he never spoke about those years, at least when when I was around. By the time I'd worn my uniform and knew what questions to ask, dementia had stolen most of his memories, and he no longer recognized his grandchildren anyway.
My dad told him that I'd taken up woodworking as a hobby after college, and that I was working with planes and hand tools. I had a collection of shiny L-N and Stanley toys, and Grampa sent me some dogmeat transition planes that I put on the mantle -- by that time, I'd given in to the shrill siren song of the powered mortiser, the tailed planer, and several very loud routers. I sent him a few completed projects, a working wooden lock and key, one of the deadblow hammers I made, stuff like that.
Dad's been cleaning out Grampa's garage during the past few trips down there, picking through the collected flotsam of a life begun dirt-broke on an Idaho dustbowl farm. I declined when asked if I wanted any of the tools -- an old Craftsman spindle lathe, a portable table saw resembling the unholy union of a skilsaw and a sawhorse, 60's and 70's era junktoolstuff that would just clutter my small shop and probably be a hazard to already endangered fingers. Besides, lately I've been interested in the quieter hand tools again, thinking about the journey described by Frid and Krenov, Kirby and Hack; maybe I'll finally read my copy of Rose's Village Carpenter.
Mom & Dad came up for the 4th this year, with a truckbed mostly full of boxes. Dad decided to bundle up a bunch of Grampa's tools for sorting, to decide what I wanted for myself. I shuffled all the plastic boxes to the woodshop, silently calculating how much freeboard the garbage cans have each week and trying not to gag on the odor of stale cat urine and musty newspapers: "Kissenger tells off NATO" and "Teenage gang terrorizes Chino". Briefly distracted by an article quoting Gov Carter describing Gov Brown as "too much like Ronald Reagan", I leave the boxes for another day.
Fast-forward to this morning, a good day for general shop cleanup and to sort through the boxes of expected router bits, dogmeat chisels and worn-out files, see if there's anything worth putting in the thriftstore box. Open the first box and find . . . molding planes? Another one contains hollows and rounds. The next one holds coffins, another groovers and rabbets. An assortment of beading planes, spokeshaves, augur bits, a handmade case of mortise chisels of myriad widths. There's a 45, a 50, a wooden plow plane that looks like my Knight prototype but even prettier. I only find 2 or 3 without cutters or wedges, some are quite worn but mostly in good shape with plenty of patina and history. SWMBO hears the whooping and comes running, assuming the bandsaur finally found the thumbsnack for which it's hungered.
I guess Grampa's gonna teach me something about woodworking, after all.
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